SPOTSWOOD — The death of a Helmetta man whose body was found in a water tank on Sept. 4 appears to have been a suicide, Police Chief Karl Martin said Tuesday.
Preliminary autopsy results on the 41-yearold man indicate the cause of death was drowning, Martin said.
“It was extremely sad,” the chief said. “We don’t like to deal with incidents like this.”
Toxicological tests done on the body won’t be available for roughly six weeks, he said.
The man’s wife last saw him on the evening of Aug. 31. She reported him missing the following day. Relatives searching the area over the next several days spotted his car in a parking lot in a borough industrial park and called police.
“What made it stand out was that on Saturday, nobody [else] was parked at the facility,” he said.
Spotswood fire officials borrowed a ladder truck from the East Brunswick fire department, scanned the woods in the area and noticed a hatch on the water tank was open, Martin said. The 350,000-gallon water tank is used by Temple Inland, a corrugated packaging company for fire suppression purposes. It is located in a wooded area, near where the victim’s son plays soccer.
The man had to climb a ladder up the 40- foot-high tank, bypass a security cage, and open the hatch to gain access to the inside of the tank, the chief said.
“He had to make an assertive effort to climb by this locked grate,” Martin said, explainingwhy officials believe it was a suicide. “It would have been practically impossible to have someone carry him up there or force him up there.”
The tank had a ladder inside, so the man could have escaped if he had fallen in accidentally, the chief said.
Law enforcement officials drained the tank and found the fully clothed body inside, with his wallet, cell phone and car keys. Dive teams recovered the body.
The man, an engineer, had been out of work for about eight months, police learned. He leaves behind his wife and two young children.
Spotswood police were assisted by the Monroe and East Brunswick fire companies, the New Jersey State Police Aviation Unit, the Monmouth County K-9 unit and the Somerset County Search and Rescue Team, Martin said.